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5 Feb 2012

I am a member of the Artfire UK Guild and today I thought I would show you some of the members of that Guilds work, as well as explain why being a member of a Guild can benefit your business if you sell handmade goods.

For those of you that are unsure what a Guild is, it is traditionally an organisation that represents a particular trade, such as carpenters or brick layers and were used to pass on skills and to keep standards of work high within that trade. If you had a Guild membership people perceived you as masters of your craft which invariably increased your chances of work.

The Handmade movement has taken on the idea of Guilds, sometimes to gather together people of the same craft, sometimes to gather people that craft from one area of the world. The Artfire UK Guild, as the name suggests, is a collection of sellers of handmade, vintage and supplies from the UK that sell through Artfire. Our mission statement is to encourage all our members to be the best they can be, so they and their businesses can thrive in a very tough market place. To that aim, we support each other, pool our knowledge and encourage each other to learn, improve and expand our knowledge of our own chosen line of work.

You can see all the shops of our Guild members here. Please do take a look around and see all we have to offer. If you are selling through Artfire and live in the UK we would welcome you to join the Guild. Just fill out the application form. You can find our Guild on Facebook too.